The Young Lions Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		5.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

The Young Lions Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 9, 2015

For those of us who grew up with Dean Martin’s ubiquitous television appearances on both The Dean Martin Show and Celebrity Roasts, as well as his seemingly inescapable hits like “Everybody Loves Somebody” which were (for some of us, anyway) regularly played on our parents’ favorite radio stations, it may sound incredible that at least some wags considered his breakup with Jerry Lewis to be the death knell of his career. To be fair, other wags thought that Martin would at least be able to continue churning out best selling records (which of course he ended up doing) if not starring in films, but Martin made a rather daring, and in hindsight smart, decision after shedding his comedy partner, and that was to appear in a straightforward dramatic film, a strategy which he evidently hoped would wipe away any lingering doubts about his acting abilities. (And to be totally fair, still other wags thought that Lewis was going to come out on the short end of the stick, breakup wise, since Martin at least had “multimedia” potential.) The Young Lions offered Martin one of his first post- Lewis chances to shine, and when one considers that the at that point dramatic lightweight was able to hold his own up against such Method stalwarts as Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift, a certain credence was lent at the time to the emerging perception that Martin was indeed an actor of previously untapped potential.

Brando, chewing snowballs along with various other scenery (see screenshot 6), portrays German soldier Christian Diestl, an early acolyte of Adolf Hitler who believes in his heart that Hitler’s vows of a new Aryan promised land will sweep away the misery left by the devastating wake of World War I and the Treaty of Versailles. Less convinced is pretty young Margaret Freemantle (Barbara Rush), a woman who meets Christian pre-World War II on the ski slopes and who had some romantic twinges for him which were in fact snuffed by his nascent Nazism.

Margaret turns out to be the link between one of the other central characters and Christian, an American soldier named Michael Whiteacre (Dean Martin), an affable young man with a budding show business career who becomes buddies with Noah Ackerman (Montgomery Clift) as the two wend their way through physical exams and, later, basic training. Michael caught Margaret on her rebound from Christian, and the two are now romantically involved. Noah, a slight and somewhat psychologically conflicted Jew, ultimately becomes involved with Hope Plowman (Hope Lange), a gorgeous young blond who might be thought (by those with a proclivity to engage in a bit of Yiddish) as the perfect shiksa. In fact, Hope’s family has never even met a Jew before, something that plays into the film’s depiction of sometimes faltering romantic unfoldings. Anti-Semitism is not just a romantic problem for Noah, however, as he has to confront it in the barracks as well, another setup which ultimately pays a somewhat expected plot dividend down the road.

The Young Lions is not really a traditional “war” film in any real sense, though of course the epochal conflicts of World War II play into events as the film moves along. This is much more of a character study of the men in war, or (as in the case of Michael) watching it from the sidelines, rather than the war itself being the prime focus. What’s so interesting about Edward Anhalt’s screenplay (culled from a best selling novel by Irwin Shaw) is how it effortlessly segues from Axis to Allied viewpoints, drawing parallels and divergences from the various nationalities of its characters.

At over three hours, The Young Lions probably takes too long to deliver its hoary “war is hell” message, but along the way, each of the featured performers gets his or her chance to shine. Brando is characteristically a little pretentious at times (just watch his work with various props, including that aforementioned snowball), but manages to deliver some brooding psychological underpinnings for Christian’s change of heart. Martin truthfully doesn’t have to stretch all that hard to bring Michael to life, but he offers a genuine and natural feeling performance. Clift is awfully wan looking throughout the film (The Young Lions was made in the wake of his devastating car accident), and while his physical demeanor is actually kind of shocking, it ultimately plays into and helps to support Noah’s fragility. The two main women in the cast, Barbara Rush and Hope Lange, are at times the “conscience” of the piece, offering commentary that motivates various characters both into and out of the action. (May Britt is also on hand, offering a nicely seductive turn as the wife of Christian’s superior, portrayed by Maximilian Schell.)

Irwin Shaw evidently wasn’t very happy with this cinematic adaptation of his novel, feeling (perhaps accurately) that the film whitewashed both Christian’s incipient Nazism as well as the anti-semitism Noah encounters. The second issue is perhaps not as flagrant as Shaw may have believed, for while there aren’t any florid examples within the film, there’s certainly no ambivalence about what Noah is going through and how some of his compatriots feel about him. (My late father, one of the few Jews to have reached the rank of Army Major General in the entire history of the United States, actually kept his Judaism a secret from almost all of his World War II buddies, simply to keep from being hassled in this way, not to mention it preventing him from climbing up the ranks.) The first issue is potentially a bit more problematic, and obviously stemmed from the desire to make Christian an at least partially sympathetic character. Ironically, that approach probably plays a little more palatably now than it did in 1958, a mere 13 years after World War II had ended and memories of Nazi atrocities were still fresh in the minds of many.

The Young Lions Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Young Lions is presented on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. This is what a lustrous transfer of a black and white CinemaScope production should like on Blu-ray, in my not so humble opinion. The elements have been beautifully restored, with nary a problematic nick or blemish to be found. Grain is wonderfully rendered and completely natural looking. Contrast is exceptional, supporting a beautifully modulated gray scale. The image is sharp and precise looking, to the point that you can actually see a stray thread on one of Brando's epaulets in some scenes, where I have a hunch an on set seamstress may have made some last minute repairs. The film does have quite a bit of stock footage, including a bunch of establishing shots for various locales, as well as what looks like old film of a mess hall for one sequence, and those moments are understandably much more raggedy looking, with "baked in" damage and at times a bit more untamed grain structure.

The Young Lions Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Young Lions features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix which is frankly not entirely immersive, but which offers its various elements with excellent fidelity and prioritization and without damage of any kind to report. Dialogue is very cleanly rendered, and Hugo Friedhofer's score provides sonic momentum to several key sequences. While occasional discrete sound effects dot the surrounds, this is a somewhat restrained mix that offers much of its content front and center.

The Young Lions Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Original Theatrical Trailer (480i; 2:48). Grammar Nazis (and you know whom you are) may want to pay attention to the crawl that opens this piece, as it contains a grating error.


• Isolated Score Track is presented in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0.


• Audio Commentary features Lem Dobbs along with Twilight Time's Julie Kirgo and Nick Redman.

The Young Lions Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Young Lions is, like The Night of the Generals (another recent Twilight Time release), a "war movie" at a surface level only. This film is much more interested in the psychological ramifications of the battle on various characters rather than the battle itself, and as such, there's relatively little "action" in the way that many war movies provide. The performances are uniformly excellent, even if Brando inches toward self parody a time or two (or three). Edward Dmytryk directs unobtrusively, and if one at times wishes he could have moved things along a bit more briskly, ultimately the film succeeds based on the strength of its performances and the redolence of some of its underlying ideas. Technical merits are first rate, and The Young Lions comes Recommended.